The selections found in this section are all derived from a special session
on James O. Young's new book, Art & Knowledge, which was held at
the 2003 meetings of the Canadian Society for Aesthetics in Halifax on May 30,
2003. Young’s most recent book – he earlier published Global Anti-Realism
(Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1994) -- is unquestionably a fecund contribution
to the field: four outstanding critiques of Art and Knowledge were presented
in this session, which I chaired and introduced, without even, for the most
part, dealing with what Young calls the central claims of his book. The central
claims of Art and Knowledge are contained within the middle three chapters
of the book which discuss the distinctions between “semantic” and “illustrative”
representation, “rational” and “illustrative” demonstration, and evaluation
in art, respectively. These three chapters are framed by two controversial
chapters that Young maintains could stand on their own. The first chapter presents
Young’s definition of what art is while the last discusses the ways in which
“avant-garde” art fails with respect to Young’s evaluative criteria for good
art.

In "Truth, Art and Knowledge," Michael Watkins and Sheldon Wein
take up issues dealt with in Chapter 1 of Art and Knowledge, where Young
presents us with his “institutional theory” of what art is. According to this
account, a work of art is anything considered a work of art by some “artworld”
whose members stipulate the qualities that an art work must have. Watkins and
Wein argue that Young’s definition is excessively relativistic as well as viciously
circular. They also maintain that the definition is inconsistent with Young’s
attempt to argue for a normative criterion of good art as that which presents
its audience with a particular sort of cognitive content.

In one of the two issues raised in his contribution, “Art and
Knowledge,” John MacKinnon elaborates on these same points. That is, if art
works are defined procedurally or formally by reference simply to what some
group of people say, then how can an art work also be defined by some functional
or substantive property, such as “possesses cognitive content of a particular
sort?” Although Young maintains that his relativism is “temperate” rather than
“radical,” MacKinnon fails to see how Young can make this case given his purely
perspectival, formal definition of art. Moreover, to the extent that Young is,
or could be successful in this approach, surely means, according to MacKinnon,
that he has to give up his substantive account of good art as that with cognitive
content. Young is, then, guilty of a rather schizophrenic account, according
to MacKinnon, with his head leading him towards perspectivalism (in defining
art) while his heart (and tastes) point him towards a substantive theory (of
what constitutes good art).

MacKinnon deals with a second issue regarding the way in which fiction represents;
this gets taken up by as well by Ira Newman in “’The Hamlet of Albany’: Reflections
on James Young’s Art and Knowledge.” MacKinnon raises the issue specifically
in the context of fictional characters: the extent to which an author constructs
a successful character, he argues, is the extent to which she constructs a character
that is not simply a representation of a “type.” Newman approaches this point
by maintaining that Young is mistaken in seeing fictive characters exclusively
(or even primarily) as clusters of general traits or as tokens of general personality
types. The cognitive lessons to be learned from fictional characters often work,
Newman argues, in exactly the opposite direction, from a general trait to more
and more individualized and non-reproducible individuals operating as a sort
of paradigm.

In her fascinating “Does Contemporary Art Have Conceptual Value?”
Sherri Irvin turns our attention to Young’s claims about avant-garde art, particularly
conceptual art such as John Cage’s 4’ 33” or Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain.
In particular, Irvin takes issue with Young’s claim that much avant-garde
art fails to have any cognitive value because it lacks what Young calls “illustrative
representation.” Irvin makes her case in large part by a close examination of
two contemporary Canadian artists -Annie Thibault and Liz Magor- both of whom
are conceptual artists, but still manage, according to Irvin, to present us
with valuable cognitive insights.

Finally, in "Replies to My Critics" Young responds to
each of his critics. At times, Young’s response consists of sticking firmly
to his original points, as he does, for example, with respect to his definition
of art and to his suggestions for what constitutes good art. At other times,
however, Young is willing to take a critic’s point into his account, as he does
with some of Newman’s suggestions. And finally, Young at times does both of
the above simultaneously. We see this in his response to Irvin when he maintains
that if she is right (and Young wrong) about the cognitive content of
some avant-garde art, he is at least wrong on his terms: that is, he is wrong
in terms of the criteria of art he establishes in the main chapters of Art
and Knowledge.

I want to thank Sheldon Wein for organizing this symposium on
Jim’s book. I also want to congratulate all the participants at the symposium,
most particularly Jim himself, for producing what I hope readers will agree
is a fascinating exchange of ideas.